Unofficial news and tips about Google

March 27, 2007

Google Screensaver

Update: The screensaver is now a Picasa feature. You can download Picasa from picasa.google.com.

Google Screensaver is a Windows screensaver that displays photos from different locations:

Your computer. You select a list of folders that contain photos and Google Screensaver monitors the JPEGs from these folders.

Picasa Web Albums. If you use Google's photo sharing site, you can view pictures from the most recently modified albums and from your contacts. It's probably the most interesting feature of Picasa Web Albums: you can monitor all the photos uploaded to your contacts' albums.

The screensaver acts like a slideshow so you can move to the next/previous photo using the mouse. The title and the author of a photo is always visible and you can go to the source of the photo by clicking to one of the links from the bottom of the window.

You can configure the visual effects (collage, wipe, pan and zoom, cross fade) and how often the photos change.

The screensaver is a part of Google Pack, but if you get it from this page you can install only the screensaver. Then you can uninstall Google Updater and keep the screensaver.